Speeches & Writing of John Quincy Adams in Library of America

Speeches & Writings

by John Quincy Adams

David Waldstreicher, editor

Library of America 2025

“The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull,” quipped legendary Secretary of State Dean Acheson. “This is not always easy to achieve.”

Not always easy, no, but certainly possible if an editor decides to assemble the writings and speeches of a life-long politician, since most politicians and statesmen either spend their entire careers writing very dull speeches or else paying people to write very dull speeches. And if this is true of the ordinary politician, who gets in the game in his late 40s, spends 20 years proclaiming his high ideals while systematically selling them off for parts, and ends his service by flying to a dictator's summer home and abasing himself in exchange for no money, no power, no influence, no gratitude, and no immunity from petty aggression, how much more true must it be of somebody who was literally born into politics and lived in it for 80 years.

Such a one is John Quincy Adams, who was indispensable aide to his father President John Adams while JQA was still a child, went on to be indispensable aide to other presidents, served as the country's first legendary Secretary of State, became its sixth president himself, then went on to serve nearly 20 years in the House of Representatives, dying in harness in 1848 after a literal lifetime of never shutting his mouth.

It stands to reason that the literary remains of such a lifetime would make for some plenty dull reading, and this is the challenge before editor David Waldstreicher in compiling this new Library of American volume collecting speeches and writings of John Quincy Adams. This volume follows up the Library of America's wonderful two-volume edition of diary Adams kept throughout his life, and since that set was also edited by Waldstreicher, readers wary of this new volume might feel some hope. It's a sturdily valuable thing, with nearly 100 pages of End Notes in compact type, and Waldstreicher starts it off with a mercifully brief introductory essay that opens by comparing the famous son with the even more famous father:

Both were deeply committed to the principles of the American Revolution, but skeptics of democracy. Both rejected the idea of partisanship while being temperamentally unable to resist hard-fought political battles. Both were ardent nationalists, despite a cosmopolitanism born of many years spent abroad in the service of their country. They leaned conservative, except when they were radical. They were against slavery – but for a long time had little to say about it.

This is far enough as long as it goes, and thankfully it doesn't go on very long before readers are turned over to the texts themselves, various addresses and commemorative speeches of drastically varying levels of interest. Easily the most wonderful element of this volume, going a long way to evening out the interest-level of the various pieces, is Waldstreicher's editorial attention to detail. Readers keeping an eye on those micro-typed End Notes will soon realize that thanks to this volume's editor, the foremost critic of the prose of John Quincy Adams here is often … John Quincy Adams, excoriating himself in his aforementioned diary. Take for instance the conclusion of the Fourth of July oration he gave in 1831:

In the course of nature, the voice which now addresses you, must soon cease to be heard upon earth. Life and all which it inherits, lose of their value as it draws towards its close. But for most of you, my friends and neighbors, long and many years of futurity are yet in store. May they be years of freedom – years of prosperity – years of happiness, ripening for immortality! But, were the breath which now gives utterance to my feelings, the last vital air I should draw, my expiring words to you and your children should be, INDEPENDENCE AND UNION FOREVER!

Blandly effective stuff, probably much enhanced by the then-legendary status of the speaker. But that speaker was ruthless with himself when writing in private:

I was occupied much of the day in writing a closing paragraph for my Discourse – At this late hour I absolutely sickened at that which I had written – it was gloomy, inauspicious, and affectedly rather than affectingly full of myself – The new paragraph, totally changed its character: gave to the future an aspect of hope and gladness instead of despondency – urged to generous and energetic action, and to calm reliance on a superintending Providence – leaving a slight allusion to my own age, and proximity to my end, at the close; but merely to give additional Solemnity to the dying Sentiment of my father, and linking the perpetuity of Union with that of Independence pointing all at the same time to the future prospects of my Auditory – As it is, my judgment pronounces the Peroration good – As it was till this very day, it was execrably bad, and I was utterly unaware of it – My self-criticism was disarmed by the pathos of a close, in the last words of my father, and I had not remarked the awkwardness of manner in which I had brought it forth – How severe a Censor it behooves me to be upon myself.

Of course, this kind of dual narrative might have the ultimate result of driving most readers right back to that excellent Library of America two-volume set of the diaries rather than keep them soldiering along in town council addresses and rounded-off self-censored sentiments about controversies from nearly two centuries ago. But since even at its most polished this particular statesman's public prose could be a bit dull, that might not be such a bad result.

Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Washington Post, The American Conservative, The Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, The National, and the Daily Star. He has written regularly for The Boston Globe, the Vineyard Gazette, and the Christian Science Monitor and is the Books editor of Georgia’s Big Canoe News